Author: Anonymous

The first time I experienced a deep fear of him was when he spilled red wine on a brand new white down comforter, I reacted, and he snapped. The hulk-like transition happened so quickly that all I remember is running to the bathroom, locking the door behind me, and hiding in the bathtub, gripping my knees close to my chest, crying, and praying. He busted the door down in anger, saw me terrified, softened immediately, and offered to hold me. I let him.

“That’s a one-time thing,” I thought. And he felt awful. Besides, I was a strong, independent, vocal young woman. I would never put up with a man abusing me, verbally, or otherwise. I was the last girl who would be in that position.

But that’s not how it happens. You see…he was on his best behavior after that, loving me and caring for me, while slowly chipping away at me, isolating me, making me more dependent on him. We were young and married, and I was trying to be a “good Christian wife.” We went to church on Sundays and led youth groups weekly. He prayed and read the bible. God was going to fix this. He was going to take care of us, I just knew it.

Until the next time…when he drank too much, got a DUI, and I had to drive him to work each morning. One particular morning was different. I wasn’t having it. We had been in a fight the night before, one like the bathroom, except this time, I locked myself in the closet, laid on the carpet and cried, waiting for the rage to pass. There was no “holding me” this time. Just silence and quiet rage that burned through the night. I told him to find another way to work in the morning. In my young mind, that felt punishment enough, and the last place I wanted to be was in a car with him, early in the morning after what had just happened. That morning, he woke me up, demanding I get out of bed and drive him to work. I quietly and calmly said, “I meant it when I told you to find a different way this morning.” He pulled me out of bed, stood me up, pinned me up against the wall. His neck was red, with veins starting to rise. I stared back at him with an “I dare you” look. His voice raised and he threatened me. Those words still sting. “I will FUCK YOU UP,” he muttered. I slapped his face. It was a reaction I didn’t see coming. I couldn’t believe my God-fearing husband would say those words, with spit flying out of his mouth, with his nose nearly touching mine as I had nowhere to go with my back against the wall. I closed my eyes, afraid of what he might do next, but when I opened them, he was gone. He had slammed the door and left me there. I guess he found a different ride to work after all.

When he came home that day, he shared that his father was abusive to his mother. I knew that but not the extent of it. I had triggered him. He was ashamed. By slapping him in the face, I had taken him back to those moments, when he was a boy. He told me this with tears in his eyes, and I felt awful. Days went by where I felt conflicted, angry but sorry. He never did take responsibility or apologize for his part in that.

He began to complain more and more about pain in his shoulder, eventually seeking medical care and prescriptions. I thought nothing of it. He would start to experience sleepiness or slurring of words. Reaching in the freezer one day, he passed out in the kitchen, just fell over and hit the floor. I propped up his head with a pillow. The next day I counted the number of pill bottles on our bathroom counter. I began to research all of them. They were enough to tranquilize a horse. I walked into the doctor’s office with a plastic bag filled with these bottles and begged them to stop prescribing this amount of painkillers.

The ups and downs continued. There were many arguments that turned into me trying to walk away and leave the room. He would block the door, sometimes pin me to the ground and hold me there until I stopped resisting. I would spend many more hours in that closet, crying and praying with the door locked. Many times I would pray for God to just stop my heart from beating because it hurt too much, because I couldn’t take it anymore. I convinced him to go to our pastor with me for marital counseling. He sat in that room, looking at the pastor, recounting these incidents so differently than I remembered. He would talk about how “crazy” I was, how I was “uncontrollable” and he would hold me for my safety. I started to believe him.

“ I would spend many more hours in that closet, crying and praying with the door locked…Sometimes I would pray for God to just stop my heart.”

Not much later, our friend caught him snorting crushed up prescription pills in her bathroom. I almost didn’t believe her. When I addressed it, he became angry, and anytime I brought it up after that, the same hulk-like rage would appear, blocking the doorway, and I would become afraid. I started sleeping in the guest room. Each night he would follow me, demanding I come back to our room, grabbing our dog by her collar and dragging her out of the guest room away from me, taking my cell phone because “he paid for it.” He would punish me.

As fear grew, I decided to pack an emergency bag. I didn’t tell anyone how bad things were getting. I was embarrassed. My prayers turned into pleads for one of those incidents to turn into him actually hitting me, so I could leave. The pinning me down or sitting on my chest so I couldn’t breathe, the screaming, the blocking me from escape, that didn’t feel like enough. If he would just actually hit me, with his fist, in my face - that would be abuse, and that would be enough to leave. In the meantime, I would look for a way out, a better job with money I could save, one that I could easily transition to a different city.

It was the day before my first official school day as an assistant teacher through the lateral entry program. I had been working there for a month, helping prepare the classroom. I felt free at that school, with smiling faces and support, I felt more like me. I grabbed my clothes for the next day out of our closet and folded them to take them to the guest room, so I could get a good night’s sleep, wake up without disturbing him, and get ready for my first day! This particular night, he really wasn’t having it. He threw his shoulder into the door, entering in a rage. He grabbed my phone and my keys and stood in the doorway. He moved to the closet and starting tearing my things off of hangers, to find a suitcase nestled in the corner. He found my emergency bag. He looked back at me. I stood there frozen and in silence, my mind racing, “how do I get out of this room, how do I get past him.” I was in my pajamas, no shoes, if I could just grab my keys from him, I could run to the car and make a break for it. I could drive to our friend’s house in the neighborhood next door for help. As his shoulders grew and his fists tightened, I lept towards his right hand to try to grab my keys and scoot past him.

He leveled me. He had my hands pinned down, his knees in my armpits, the weight of him on my chest. He lifted one fist, and as he wound up to hit me, I squirmed, threw my knee into his injured shoulder and the rest is fuzzy. I don’t know how I got out, I don’t know what adrenaline allowed me to hurl his 200+ lb body off of me, but the next thing I knew I was out our front door, barefoot running down the street as fast as I could. Moments later, I saw headlights behind me. He was following me in my car, he was on my phone, telling his family I had lost it and was running through the street. I kept running, I was yelling for help. No one came out of their homes. I made it to our friend’s house. I ran through the grass as he tried to cut me off in the driveway. Still screaming, my friend’s husband came to the door with a gun. I ran past him and begged him not to let my husband in. He must have just known. He stood there in the doorway, with his gun in front of him, and told my husband to go.

The next day, from the kitchen of my friend’s home, I called my new boss and told her I would not be into work, and that I couldn’t take the job. I called my parents, who were divorced, and begged them to come together, to help me get my dog, my bag, my phone, and get me out of there. With my husband at work, I called the police to escort me into my home so I could get my things. Someone had alerted my husband and his jeep tires screeched as he came around the corner and through our front door. The two officers stood there with their hands on their belts. They advised me to get what was necessary and go. They wouldn’t let me take my dog or anything bigger than my purse as that would need to be “decided in court.” I grabbed my purse and left. Hours later, my parents had arrived, together in the same car. They picked me up and drove me to the house to get my dog. He was there. I was waiting for my father to stand up for me, to protect me. He didn’t. He remained quiet and tried to keep things calm. My mother grabbed the dog and stood in my husband’s face. She stared him right in the eyes and told him to stay the hell away from me.

The drive to my mother’s house was quiet. I felt numb, exhausted. My dog’s head laid on my lap and I stared out the window. I didn’t know how or what to feel. I was free, but I still felt caged.

“I didn’t know how or what to feel. I was free, but I still felt caged.”

Months passed as I walked around the house lost, grieving, numb. My mother said I looked like a lifeless skeleton, just empty. I struggled with knowing who I was, what was next. I vacillated from being broken and sad and even missing him to rage and anger and rebellion. I applied for a credit card and bought things that he would never have let me buy just to test the freedom, to see if it was real. I dyed my hair and got a new tattoo, just to reinvent myself, to feel something. I reached out to my “church friends” to find a community, to find a job...crickets. Unless I was actually at church, in which case they walked right up to me with everyone watching, held my hands and told me they were “praying for me.”

I went on dates with the attitude I assumed most guys have, like “I am in control, I don’t need you, I’m just here for a good time.” I ate meals and drank coffee with them, and didn’t feel bad about saying no to a second date. I didn’t want to meet their friends or makeout. I just wanted to go on a date to prove I could, and then walk away to prove I could do that too.

I went years pretending it was a bad Lifetime movie that I had watched, but it wasn’t my life. I went to therapy but never mentioned the extent of which this killed me. I still found myself saying things like “well, so many others have it worse,” or “I never had to go to the hospital.” It’s now that I am in a healthy relationship, one in which I have never even heard my partner raise his voice at me. It’s now, that I love myself, that I have owned my worth, that I have regained my strength, that I am just now really dealing with how broken I was. It is now, that I realize more than ever, this can happen to anyone, that this was never about me, that I am not weak, that it is not my fault. It is now that I claim that this was done TO me, not because of me. It is now that I claim my survival, that I am more comfortable owning my story if it saves another.

“It is now, that I realize more than ever, this can happen to anyone, that this was never about me, that I am not weak, that it is not my fault. It is now that I claim that this was done TO me, not because of me. It is now that I claim my survival, that I am more comfortable owning my story if it saves another.”

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